


passage bird

by shipyrds



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Ibex's Overdeveloped Sense of Responsibility, so you put too much thought into birthday gifts?, that's it that's the fic, time to have some feelings about siblings, you know when you stop knowing how to relate to your sibling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-15 19:48:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28943949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shipyrds/pseuds/shipyrds
Summary: The Rose brothers, in a series of scenes.
Relationships: Ibex & Jerboa (Friends at the Table)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 8





	passage bird

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LuckyDiceKirby](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LuckyDiceKirby/gifts).



> **passage bird** n. fledged, free-flying juvenile birds that are trapped on their first migration (or passage) southward. These birds become tame but do not imprint; therefore they may retain some survival skills if lost.
> 
> —
> 
> "If Detachment is a falcon, then what’s Righteousness?" 
> 
> Ibex resisted the mechanistic urge to bite his tongue. "Oh, Quentin." He ran his hand down his little brother’s fresh fade. "It’s a vulture, man. It’s a fucking vulture." 
> 
> \- C/W 25, "You Can Call Me Captain"

Quentin is eight, and he loves the boardwalk, and he loves his brother. He spends half the summer perpetually sticky, tugging at Attar's sleeve, trying to wheedle his way into the janky haunted house sim that is way too scary for him. It's an in-between series of months, Attar's last long break between September and whatever comes next. He's tried not to think too hard about what that might be, about fucking geopolitics and councillors and the ever-expanding shipyards outside Slate. He focuses, instead, on the syncopated rhythm of Quentin's shoes running past him, chasing the little drone Attar bought him as a "sorry I missed the last three years of your life, little bro" gift. 

"Don't go too far," Attar calls. The boardwalk isn't as crowded as it will become later in the evening, but Quentin is still just a kid, with a habit of poking his nose where it doesn't belong. Plenty of folks here happy to scam a kid. 

Quentin just turns and laughs over his shoulder. And, predictably, he trips, too busy looking up at the drone to notice the uneven boards beneath his feet. He goes sprawling, arms windmilling too late to catch himself, but not too late to bat the drone out of the sky. 

Attar expects Quentin to cry, when he runs up to him. His hands have got to be full of splinters from the archaic wood of the boardwalk, imported from wherever the hell to add a touch of authenticity. But Quentin is just laying on his back like a little turtle, eyes wide and surprised. 

"You okay, little guy?" Attar asks, reaching out a hand. 

"I'm fine," Quentin says. "I'm too big to cry anymore anyway. Did it break?" 

The drone is fine, mostly. A little battered on one wing. It's a Peace model with tiny, hand-painted details. Attar feels slightly weird about having gifted his brother a piece of propaganda, but Quentin loves it. He'd gotten all big and quiet and wide-eyed when he opened the package, like he couldn't believe it was really his, and then launched immediately into a speech about responsibility that was definitely word for word from whatever mech show he'd been watching recently. He really shouldn't be allowed to watch that shit. 

Attar picks up the toy, resisting the urge to crush the thing in his fist. He straightens the wing, rubs away an imaginary smudge with his thumb. "Good as new," he says, and Quentin beams. 

Then his phone rings. Apostolos is on the move. Righteousness's candidate has been killed. And that's the last time he sees Quentin as Attar. 

The war is long and ugly, a protracted paroxysm of brutality that drags out and drags out and drags out. Endless fucking meetings. He hadn't expected war to involve so much sitting around and talking. Righteousness is vicious and steady in his ear, and he feels almost like a mouthpiece. When they are aligned, it is exhilarating, all his nerves alight with approval, with the heady pleasure of being— well, right. He clings, white-knuckled, to the feeling; it carries him through the nights when they are not aligned. 

And at the end of it all, Counterweight is splintered and ruined, its perfect mirror flung into the sky above it like a taunt. The Miracle of Weight. Thank God he'd gotten Quentin off-planet, safe well behind Diaspora lines in a perfectly ordinary school full of perfectly ordinary kids. 

After the war, it's still endless meetings, but he can be ruder, since the attendees are no longer carrying guns. He spends time with Quentin when he can— weekends here and there bookended by family dinners. They cook old recipes together, some of Maryland's favorites, the chicken their dad used to make. He picks Quentin up from school, sometimes, in a flashy hovercar that Quentin thinks is the coolest shit he's ever seen. He spends the whole ride pushing every chrome button, his face lit with uncomplicated joy, and Ibex, who has just come back from September and is feeling every moment of the long trip in his shoulders, lets him. 

But Quentin grows taller and surlier. The car is embarrassing now, instead of exciting. "Everyone says I look like some kind of OriCon shill," Quentin complains. "Like I'm about to go to a boardroom and steal a billion creds." Ibex, who has spent a non-zero amount of time in boardrooms with people who do regularly steal billions of creds, thinks Quentin would look like a gangly teenager no matter who picked him up. But he lets Quentin take the maglev home with his friends instead, and gives him creds to buy soda and street food on the way. There are other ways to spend time with him. He can be flexible. 

The night after Quentin graduates, Ibex takes him out for celebratory burgers. Brotherly bonding time, sitting across from each other in a grubby diner while Quentin plays games on his phone and Ibex rifles madly through his conversational opening gambits. Righteousness hums like a fluorescent light in the back of his mind. He ignores it. 

"I promise I'm not gonna ask what your plans are. I'm sure you're sick of hearing it," he starts.

Quentin frowns at his screen, fingers flying fast over the buttons. His phone warbles, a tinny, mournful little run of notes.

Ibex's jaw tightens. He soldiers on. "But if you need anything, you let me know, okay? I didn't make it this far to leave my little brother in the lurch." 

"That's okay," Quentin says. "I got things figured out myself."

"Yeah?" Ibex leans in, keeping a careful inch between his suit and the sticky edge of the formica. 

Quentin gives him a withering look. "I'm gonna become a candidate," he says, sounding bored, as though he hasn't sent Ibex tumbling, gravity-less. 

He had thought Quentin was being secretive about _school._ He'd assumed it was an art program, or something, that Quentin thought he'd disapprove of that kind of impractical path. But maybe he should have expected this. Quentin had idolized him for years. Ibex had thought his brother safe, in that ugly teenage interlude of being wildly embarrassed by anything to do with family, from that particular brand of hero worship. But he should have run better calculations. Should have done the numbers differently. (He hadn't wanted to let Righteousness touch his family. Had tried his best to keep them apart, separated by the thinnest of membranes.) And Quentin always did love those stupid fucking mech shows. 

Ibex is too angry to bother with his candidate voice. "Absolutely not," he says, flatly. 

Quentin, predictably, scoffs. "Oh, so you're the only one who can make sacrifices to keep us safe?" 

Who pumped his head full of all these ideals? Ibex thought his brother was smarter than to fall for the lie of martyrdom. "You're my baby brother, Quentin, and you're not doing this."

"You can't actually stop me. I'm not Kobus. I don't do whatever you tell me to." 

Of course Quentin isn't Kobus. Ibex has been very, very careful, to prevent Quentin from ending up like Kobus. He has allowed Quentin every freedom, and this— this is what he's doing with it. "You're a child, and you have no idea what you're signing away." 

"And whose fault is that? Every time you came home, it was just, 'oh, fine. I'm fine. Everything's fine.'" Quentin slouches in his seat. He flicks a fry to the edge of his plate, where it dangles limply. "You just don't want anyone to edge in on your Executive shtick. You’re afraid I’ll steal the spotlight."

Ibex thinks of all the Divines his baby brother could end up with. It won’t be Service, but Defiance needs a candidate. So does Integrity. "You want a spotlight?" he asks. "Go into politics. Fucking go be a shill for Earthhome. I'll get you a shuttle myself. But not this, Quentin. Not this." 

He rubs at his temples; he’s had a headache building behind his eyes for hours. On the other side of Counterweight, operatives are moving into place, ready to move on a Grace stronghold. He should really be there, but he sent a synth, because he wanted to be here in person, for Quentin. For his brother who won't look at him. The feedback from the synth is making his teeth hurt. 

If Quentin wants to be treated like any other Diasporan citizen, then fine. Fine. "I have to go," Ibex says, standing. "I'll call someone for you." 

"That's fine," Quentin says, pushing his plate away. "I'll take the train."

Ibex already has his phone out. "Yeah, L&D, can you— yeah. The burger joint near 8th and Axon." 

"Oh, what, you're too busy for me, but _Liberty and Discovery_ isn't?" 

"They'll be here soon," Ibex says. "I'll be back late. Don't wait up." 

"I wasn't planning to!" Quentin calls after him. The door swings shut behind them both. "Fucker," he says, too quiet for Ibex to hear over the whoosh of the gate he has just opened, but not too quiet for Righteousness, helpful as always. 

The gate is already beginning to collapse when Ibex allows himself to look back through it. His baby brother kicks the curb and lets out a wordless yell. Then he turns and flops to sit on the concrete, arms crossed on his knees. 

Ibex holds the gate open for one breath, another. On the other side of the world, Quentin reaches down and wipes the scuff off the toe of his sneaker. Then the fire closes in and winks out, and the gate is shut. 

Around Ibex, the soft chatter of well-trained voices rises like a tide. The soft and deadly thump of boxes of munitions, the clatter of blasters being cleaned and checked and holstered. Ibex closes his eyes and lets Righteousness swallow him whole. 

—

Several weeks later, Executive Ibex, candidate of the Divine Righteousness, leader of the Righteous Vanguard, sits at his desk and resists the urge to break the display in front of him. It's Quentin's aptitude results. He's almost a perfect candidate— a little brash, perhaps, but nothing the Diasporic Council of Divines doesn't think a few years with a more settled Divine will break him of. Well, Ibex had had similar results, but he finds himself yet unbroken. He scrolls down. 

They recommend Quentin Rose unreservedly as a candidate for Integrity. 

Bile rises neon and stinging in his throat. Ibex has served well over a decade with a Divine he can't disentangle himself from. He got used to the idea that his thoughts and his body are not wholly his own. And in peace as in wartime, everyone must make sacrifices. But Integrity— no, he won't let it get its claws into his little brother. 

It is the work of moments to get into the backend systems and change a few characters. Integrity becomes Detachment. And a few weeks later, Quentin becomes Jerboa. 

"You got a good one," Ibex tells his little brother, hoping the bitter pride in his voice can be ascribed to the weight of the occasion. He tells him some shit about birds.

There had been a moment, when his cursor had hovered over the fields that contained the data that would determine Jerboa's future, when Ibex had realized that he could save his brother this entirely. It would have been easy to falsify the data. Quentin Rose could have become too impulsive, or too stubborn, or too resistant— any of a hundred figures, nudged in the wrong direction, and the Council's recommendation would have swung the other way. 

Quentin Rose would have been disappointed, of course. But he would have gotten over it. Maybe he would have gone to art school after all, or opened a barber shop, or gotten into mech repair, or any of a hundred branching paths he cared to choose. 

But Jerboa hadn't chosen any of the paths that Ibex had tried to tend for him. He had run heedlessly after his brother's bloody footsteps. And Ibex had, after all his bluster, been unwilling to take that choice away from him. Maybe he'd spent too long with Righteousness, gotten too used to how it claws whatever it can get from him. Maybe he'd listened to too many of his own speeches about duty, about citizenship, about freedom. 

He downs his drink in one long swallow and gives an apologetic smile. He's brought the mood down. "Come on, Candidate Jerboa," he says. "It's your night, yeah? What do you want to do?" 

—

They don't speak again for five years. Ibex falls into work at September, and everywhere else, and by the time he realizes it's been a few months since he heard from Jerboa, Jerboa is already hand in glove with Grace and won’t return his calls. He sends a card, every year, on both of Jerboa's birthdays, and a small gift. A book of recipes, a set of drawing pencils. Pilot's gloves. It's not enough. But if Jerboa doesn't want to talk, if he's been eating up whatever Grace has fed him, if Detachment keeps itself too aloof to tell him any different, what else can Ibex do? 

And so on the anniversary of the Miracle of Wright, Ibex looks up at the fireworks that splash across the sky of Counterweight. Just outside the domes, a swarm of brilliant metal streaks across the sky. Jerboa is on the move. 

Half a galaxy away, on the Seventh Sun, Ibex drums his fingers on the captain's desk. He squints at the section of stars where he knows Counterweight hangs, though it's too distant to see. If he closes his eyes just right, he can see all of his synths' fields of view at once, superimposed over each other in a cacophony of color. 

"Good luck, little brother," he says, and the synth's voice crackles slightly on the delivery. His own, as usual, does not waver. 

**Author's Note:**

> happy secret samol Sarah!!! I was so excited to get you and your absolutely wonderful prompts. As you can see I picked the one that made me saddest. I hope you enjoy! 💜💜💜 
> 
> also many many many thanks to the transcription team and to searchatthetable.net without which I would never have remembered anything that happened in c/w


End file.
